Smith's Monthly #7

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Screamer turned and took Patty’s hand.

  “Patty Ledgerwood,” she said, smiling.

  I was smiling as well. I now had her full name.

  “Nice meeting you,” Screamer said, his eyes lighting up at her touch.

  My eyes would light up at her touch as well. I just hope Screamer didn’t fall in love with her mole. I sort of felt possessive over that small spot on her neck since it had helped save me from being killed in dull-office-land.

  “You’re father’s Alvin Ledgerwood, from the Dunes?”

  “He is,” Patty said.

  “Tell him I said hello next time you see him. I hope his retirement is going fine. I worked many a case with him.”

  “He loves the free time,” Patty said, “but he misses the work.”

  So now I knew that Patty was not only strikingly beautiful, but she was from an old-time Vegas family. No wonder she knew about ghost slots.

  He let go of Patty’s hand and then looked at me. “I see we have a little problem explaining what happened to Ben.”

  “Could you help?” I asked.

  “I’d love to,” Screamer said.

  He again took Patty’s hand, smiling at her, then reached over with his other hand toward Samantha.

  “Mrs. MacDuff,” Screamer said, his voice level and contained, “I’m going to show you something that Patty and The Boy here saw.”

  Without giving her time to say a word, he touched her arm.

  She froze, her head up as if she was seeing something through the blind eyes and dark glasses.

  Then, just at about the same length of time it had taken me and Patty to watch the ghost slots appear and take Ben, Screamer pulled away from both women.

  Samantha shuddered, then sort of got smaller. After a moment she asked, “How did you do that?”

  “It’s my special gift,” Screamer said. “I just took what Patty saw on that monitor and put it in your mind. I don’t have the ability to alter anything.”

  “It felt like I was standing inside her. I know what she was thinking and seeing and feeling.”

  Oh, I would have loved that, but I didn’t say anything.

  She sort of turned her head so that if she had vision, she would have been looking at Patty. “I feel as if I invaded you. I’m sorry”

  “I don’t mind,” Patty said, reaching across the table and untouched food and patting Samantha’s arm.

  “What you saw happened exactly that way,” Screamer said. “If you just think about it for a second, you’ll know I’m right.”

  Samantha shook her head and sat there for a moment. “So you’re telling me you believe what you just showed me? How do I know you’re not all in some sort of scam?”

  Screamer smiled at me, then turned to talk directly to Samantha. “Ghost slots are not a laughing matter, and not something to be discounted. Ben was taken by ghost slots, of that I have no doubt, and these two people sitting with you are good people. You’ve got the best trying to help you get your husband back.”

  I wanted to thank Screamer for the glowing endorsement, but again I stayed silent.

  “I’ve worked with the police a number of times over the years,” Screamer said, “and would be glad to give you some names to call to confirm who I am. And trust me, Patty here has family that has been around this town almost from its old mining days.”

  He stayed silent about me, which I think is just fine. It’s hard to explain Poker Boy, and right now Samantha was dealing with believing ghost slots. One thing at a time.

  “It’s just so hard to believe this happened,” Samantha said, shaking her head.

  “It happened,” Patty said. “It’s the first time I’ve seen it on tape, but I’ve been hearing about it my entire life. With the security cameras in casinos, I’m sure a lot of people have seen it. It just wouldn’t be good for a casino’s business to let out that this happens.”

  “So where is Ben?” Samantha asked. “Where did those machines take him?”

  There was a long moment of silence, then I said softly, “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  “As soon as we eat,” Screamer said, leaning back and indicating that Madge should come take his order.

  Madge made it over and took Screamer’s order for a burger and fries, hold the onions, and I added a piece of cherry pie, since enough time had gone by that I could fit dessert around that candle-lit steak.

  I suggested that Samantha eat, since she was going to need her energy to help us find Ben, and with that push she did.

  I sat back and sort of studied the group as Screamer kept the two women entertained with a story about Patty’s dad and a guy who had figured out a way to rob a casino of a thousand a day.

  Almost every one of my adventures had a team. Very seldom did I solve a case completely alone. And from the looks of it now, this adventure had its team. A blind woman and her dog, a beautiful woman side-kick and her mole, a superhero named Screamer, and me, Poker Boy.

  Those ghost slots didn’t stand a chance.

  Assuming, of course, we could find them. Ghosts of anything were never easy to track.

  Chapter Seven

  WHAT NEXT?

  ALWAYS A GOOD QUESTION

  AFTER TOLEDO MOSS, a.k.a. Screamer, finished his burger and iced tea, he looked at me. “Well? What next?”

  So far the conversation over eating had been on anything but Ben and ghost slots. We had talked about the hot weather for April, I told them about the cab driver, and Samantha even told us how she got Sue a few years back for a birthday present from Ben. But I knew we had to figure out what to do next, so while the others had been talking, I had been planning.

  Sitting silently and thinking is what any good poker player is good at. In fact, in no-limit hold-em tournaments, where a player’s entire buy-in could be lost in one dumb play, I liked to just toss all my hands away for the first half hour to an hour and just sit back and watch players. That way I knew how a player acted, what he was likely to do, before I went up against him with my money.

  So even with the wonderful talk and Patty being so close, I still managed to do some thinking, and had an answer for Screamer.

  “Can you talk to your contacts at some of the major casinos around town?” I asked Screamer. “See if there have been any reported sightings of Ben and the Saturn Slots this afternoon and evening.”

  He nodded and I faced Patty and those brown eyes. “Could you have the Horseshoe’s security team keep a close watch on that location near the stairs where the slots took Ben. Maybe they like the place. If they come back, we want to know when and how often.”

  “They’ll do it for me,” she said.

  “Good thinking, Poker Boy,” Screamer said, nodding, his gaze on something not in this room. “See if we can spot a pattern, maybe figure out where the slots and Ben are going to show next.”

  “We can only hope,” I said. “At least it’s a place to start. Patty, any chance you might have tomorrow off?”

  “I’ll take it off,” she said, smiling at me.

  I kept my face and heart under control and managed to keep going. “Great, thanks. Would you help me do some research into Valley and Standard Slots. Valley owned the things during the time they were in the Horseshoe. I’m betting they are still stored somewhere.”

  “Good thinkin’ again,” Screamer said. “Two-sided attack. Always nice to work with you, Poker Boy. You always got a play.” He stood and dropped too much money on the table for his meal.

  “I’ll also check my contacts at the police, see if anything else is going on. You staying at the Horseshoe?”

  “I am,” I said.

  “I’ll call you at seven in the morning,” Screamer said.

  He turned to my side-kick, Patty. “It was wonderful crawling around inside that beautiful head of yours.”

  Patty had the common sense to blush and say nothing at Screamer’s beaming smile.

  “Samantha,” Screamer said to her, touching her arm gently. �
��Don’t worry. We’ll find Ben. Try to get some rest. Tomorrow’s going to be a full day.”

  “I’ll try,” Samantha said.

  “Thanks, Screamer,” I said.

  He nodded to me and turned and was out the door. The room almost felt empty without him. Only the three of us, Elvis on the jukebox, and Madge were left in the diner. Screamer had a real presence about him.

  “I never thought I’d ever meet the infamous Toledo Moss,” Patty said, still blushing. “I heard my dad talk about him for years. He’s almost a legend around this town.”

  “He is at that,” I said, laughing, not mentioning that he was a superhero as well.

  Patty stared at me, those brown eyes digging into my very heart, lifting the lid, swishing the blood around. Luckily I am a poker player who has been stared-down by the best in the business. But it’s one thing to stare into the eyes of a player trying to find out your cards, it was another to stare into Patty’s big brown eyes. I hope she never took up poker.

  “Yet Toledo Moss deferred to you,” Patty said, smiling slightly. “Why do you think that is?”

  I just hoped at that moment my reputation around Las Vegas wasn’t as strong as Screamers, because he had let slip my Poker Boy name a couple of times, and if anyone would have heard of me, then I have no doubt Patty would have as well.

  “I’ve got a few years on him is all,” I said, smiling at her.

  “Why did you call him Screamer?” Samantha asked, coming to my rescue before Patty managed to peal back every ounce of protection I had with those laser-brown eyes of hers.

  “I’m not sure who started it,” I said. “But I’ve heard two reasons why.”

  “I only heard one,” Patty said. “I heard that with his special gift of getting inside people’s heads he could put nightmares into a person’s mind until they screamed for him to stop.”

  “That’s one,” I said, smiling at Patty. “He did that for the cops on a serial murder case about fifteen years ago. I don’t think he makes it a habit.”

  “And the other?” Samantha asked.

  “Sexually,” I said, “he knows what a woman wants, what she is feeling, what she is needing, and can give it to her until she screams for him to stop.”

  “Oh,” Patty said.

  Both women sat there silently, clearly lost in their own thoughts and imaginations.

  At that moment I sure wanted Screamer’s superpower, and would have traded two or three of my own to get it.

  Chapter Eight

  LOOKING FOR A GOD IN ALL THE RIGHT PLACES

  FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS, the World Series of Poker has been held mostly in the Horseshoe’s old bingo hall on the second floor, with the cashier just inside the main door, and the tournament sign-up outside to the right in the hallway.

  The World Series itself is a series of daily tournaments, with different levels of entry fees, called buy-ins, for each. I had hoped, when I arrived in town, to play in the fifteen hundred dollar buy-in, no-limit hold-em tournament that started tomorrow at noon. But now that I was helping Samantha, I would have to wait for another, later tournament.

  The structure of a World Series tournament was fairly simple. You got as many tournament chips as the buy-in, then you played until only one person had all the chips. As you might imagine, that takes time, so for years the first day of every event ended when the final table, meaning the last nine players, was reached, and they started again the next day and finished off. For the last few years, they decided to just play to midnight, and everyone still left with chips came back the next day. Either way, it made for long tournaments, with the big tournament at the end of the five weeks costing ten thousand to buy-in, and lasting five days.

  So, when I walked into the tournament room on the second floor of the Horseshoe, I could tell at once that there were still six tables in today’s pot limit two thousand dollar buy-in hold-em tournament back in the far left corner of the room. Fifty or so players sweating to stay alive and make the top twenty to thirty positions that paid out money.

  I glanced over at the electronic tournament board. Over three hundred players had started the tournament at noon and there was a first-place prize of almost two hundred thousand. There was nothing like the World Series of Poker for nice paydays. And one of those fifty players was going to pull it in.

  All cash.

  If I got a chance, I’d go back there later and watch a few hands.

  Across the front of the room were live games with different betting limits. There were maybe forty tables of poker going at once, with a lot of people standing around talking and watching games. And across the back left of the room were satellite tournaments, where players played against each other to earn their buy-in into a bigger tournament. At the moment, there were a number of one-table events going on, with the winner on each table taking a full fifteen hundred in buy-in chips.

  I liked playing satellites for warm-ups, and sometimes won my way into a big one. I planned this trip to play a bunch of what they called super-satellites until I earned my way into the ten thousand big event a month from now. Better than paying the full ten thousand out of my pocket, and more fun as well.

  At first glance around the tournament room, I didn’t see Stan. I didn’t expect to, actually. Gambling Gods, when joining the ranks of the real players, tend to come in different shapes and sizes, and can disguise themselves very well.

  “I understand you’re looking for me?” a voice said from behind me as I stood near the cashier’s area.

  I turned around to face Stan, his long face smiling at me. He wasn’t in any disguise, and was wearing his normal gray sweater and a baseball hat with no logo. His eyes were a gold and green and seemed to be able to stare right through me.

  I hadn’t told a person what I was going to do, yet Stan knew I was looking for him.

  Scary. Damn scary.

  I kept on my poker face and managed to say, “I am.” I didn’t ask him how he knew. “You have thirty seconds to talk privately?”

  “Sure do,” he said, nodding toward the small lobby outside at the top of the escalator.

  The lobby was a place where deals were done, mostly between players who had no money, and people who did. The sponsors, as they were called, took a cut of a player’s possible winnings in exchange for buying them into a tournament. Those arrangements were sometimes profitable for both sides, and often allowed a person who couldn’t play top-level poker to ride along on the excitement with a person who could.

  I led Stan over to an open spot against the wall. No one seemed to notice either of us, and I wondered if that was Stan blocking out people’s attention, or just the fact that we looked like any two players trying to make a deal, which in essence, we were.

  As soon as we got to a place where no one could hear us I asked him point blank, “You know what I’m working on?”

  He nodded. “Trying to get a guy out of the hooks of some ghost slots.” He laughed. “You always were a sucker for blind women and dogs.”

  “No contest there,” I said, laughing with him, but not feeling that much at ease.

  “And you’re wondering if I have any advice on how to do what you and Screamer are trying to do?”

  “Got me read in one,” I said.

  Stan nodded, as if thinking about how to play a hand. Then he looked directly at me. “Ghost slots are nasty things. And no one really knows how many of the things there are. They’re always hungry, and they don’t completely exist in the here and now. Some people say they can float through time and across distances, taking their human food with them. Once the human is drained of all energy and essence, they look for another snack.”

  That didn’t sound good for Ben, that’s for sure. “Any restrictions on the space or time they can move?”

  Stan shrugged. “As far as I know, they can only travel to places where they once existed in real life, like those slots did here in the Horseshoe.”

  I nodded. I had figured as much, but it was good to hear him
confirm that detail.

  He went on. “They drive the God of Slots crazy, let me tell you. She thought she had them under control until this.”

  “I’ll bet they get to her,” I said, not feeling hopeful at all. If these things couldn’t be handled by the Gambling Gods, what did a couple of superheroes like me and Screamer think we could do?

  “You ever hear of anyone getting loose from them?”

  “No,” Stan said.

  Then he stopped. I could sense that there was something he wasn’t telling me. It felt odd to be reading the main God of Poker, but that was exactly what I was doing. I was putting a read on Stan.

  “So what else is happening, Stan?”

  Stan took a deep breath, and for a moment I thought he was going to just shake his head and say nothing. Then he glanced around.

  Suddenly everyone froze. It felt as if we had moved between two moments in time.

  Almost everyone around us had their mouth open, and the woman sitting at the sign-in table was in the process of adjusting her bra while looking down the hallway to her right.

  Not only was everyone stopped like a statue, but Stan had shut off the sound as well, which in a casino can be very disconcerting. Casinos, the places I loved, were never completely quiet. Even in the slowest periods, slot machines made a humming noise, and often called out to customers to come play them, even though there were no customers around.

  Every casino I knew had background music. Just the massive numbers of lights in casinos filled the places with a low noise. But now there wasn’t a sound. Stan and I might have well been standing in the middle of the Mojave Desert without a wind.

  “Nice trick,” I said to Stan, nodding.

  “Didn’t want anyone hearing what I am about to tell you,” Stan said.

  “That good, huh?” I said, turning my attention from all the frozen people around me to Stan, suddenly very worried.

  “Actually, that bad,” Stan said. “The case you’re working isn’t the only ghost slot snatch. There have been around fifty, maybe a lot more, in the last six or seven days, and today someone got a reporter from the Sun to go stand in a certain spot in the Mirage and watch some slots take a woman.”